Love and… Mortgage?

Seems this week I’ve read a lot of articles about the trends of millennials…. including this great infographic above from Breakthroughbroker.com and this article from Insider…. I had a $1,600 ‘micro-wedding’ with only 12 guests — here’s why more people should do it. 

Pat and I totally relate! Flashback to circa 2010. We found each other, fell in love, had been dating for 3 years and ready for the next step…. but which NEXT step?

At the time, Pat had been a part-time Realtor for four years and we had the unique edge of knowing the market intimately. We understood that prices were still post-recession (aka affordable), Obama had the stellar First-time Homebuyers Credit of $8000, interest rates were at their lowest point in decades and we were ready to officially join our lives “together”. Well, homeownership just made the MOST sense. We took our hard earned money and decided to invest it into our downpayment. At first, it seemed crazy to wipe out our bank accounts to buy something… but this wasn’t just ANY thing… this is the MOST IMPORTANT thing…our HOME.

We recognized at the time, that while we were excited about a future wedding, it is just a single solitary day (or maybe a whole weekend event for some folks!). It, unfortunately, becomes a fleeting memory preserved in our minds, hearts, and of course pictures and video. Now don’t get me wrong, we still had a casual backyard BBQ buffet wedding a few years later when we had saved up some more money. But we had so many memorable moments living in our condo up to that point, both good and bad,  that I wouldn’t have traded them for anything in the world.

If we went the alternate route of spending all our savings on a wedding, and then waiting, wishing and praying that people were kind enough to gift us enough to start re-saving for a home… we might still be trying to pinch pennies. We bought at a great time and were smart enough to take on roommates to alleviate living costs. Five years later, new opportunities had presented themselves and we quickly realized that we were sitting on a nice little pile of profit. We sold the condo and made enough money that we were able to make some drastic life changes… we moved to a waterfront property, I was able to totally change careers, and buy a (new to me) hybrid vehicle. I know these things would have NEVER been possible if we didn’t have the luxury of extra money in the bank to take care of our living expenses.

What I learned… We made a small sacrifice and chose a house over a big wedding but in the end, we made out. Owning a home basically became forced savings. Paying rent is just paying someone else’s mortgage. If you have to spend the money anyways (rent ain’t free after all), invest in yourself (aka a home) and you’ll be paying into your future for years to come.

Invest in yourself, you’re worth it!